New evidence emerges on war crimes committed on Isaippiriyaa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 05 December 2010, 19:26 GMT]The gruesome killing of 27-year-old LTTE journalist Shoba (Isaippiriyaa) is a clear case of war crime committed by Sri Lanka Army, as evidences come forth indicate. Isaippriyaa never went for any kind of military training. She was exempted by the LTTE from such training, as she was a patient of Rheumatic Heart Valvular Disease, says a medical practitioner who was working in Vanni and who has personally seen her taking Echo Cardiogram test conducted by visiting US and Australian cardiologists. Until 8 May 2009 she was working as a volunteer in the Mu’l’livaaykkaal makeshift hospital. She was taken by SLA on 23rd or 24th of May 2009, while staying in D8/ Zone 4 of the Cheddiku'lam internment camp, according to the wife of the medical practitioner, a media worker who was also interned in the camp at that time.

Isaippiriyaa appearing in O'liveechchu, February 2001

Isaippriyaa’s infant child Akal, suffered aspiration while in a bunker during a Kfir bombing, got admitted in the hospital and died on 15 March 2009, the medical practitioner told TamilNet.

Above: The pictures were taken by keeping a mobile phone camera in a shopping bag. They show the scene of some camp inmates being taken into a vehicle by the SLA and kith and kin crying for them. Several men and women in the camp were taken at gunpoint by SLA and were transferred to unknown destination. Nothing was heard about them later, the medical practitioner witnessing the events said.

Below: Hunger deaths in the internment camp in Vavuniyaa.

Another woman was also taken along with Isaippriyaa from the interment camp by the SLA, says the wife of the medical practitioner.

The meta-data found in the video released by the Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS) to Channel-4 on August 25, 2009, showed 18 July 2009 as the date of recording. The present release involving the killing of Isaippiriyaa belongs to the same scene of massacre.

Administrations of many countries, especially the Co-Chairs, and the UN, repeatedly appealed to the people to come out of the war zone. When they came out none of them were there to take care.

On the isolation and internment of LTTE combatants, The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon said that Sri Lanka has the right to intern them for up to one year. But the UN was not there to see who were combatants and who were non-combatants.

Isaippriyaa’s case is a clear instance, raising many pertinent questions on behalf of thousands of victims like her, pointing at not only towards the Rajapaksa regime for the war crimes, but also towards the war crimes responsibility of the international system, the UN and the administrations of several countries.

The medical practitioner also confirms that there were several deaths in the internment camps, due to hunger and diseases. Most of the victims were the elderly and children. The children died mainly due to meningitis, hepatitis, diarrhoea and cerebral malaria, the medical practitioner said.

Hunger and diseases took the life of a large number of civilians in the war zone too. On the number of people staying in the war zone, the Colombo government and the Indian government insisted on a figure that was just one fifth of the actual figure, while the UN citation was only half.

Who were responsible for the wrong figures and the resultant death of a large number of civilians lacking supplies of food and medicine, is another area the war crimes investigation may have to concentrate.

Classified documents being leaked by WikiLeaks show that at least there was intention in the West to stop the war and to organize an international responsibility for the affected people. But there were some establishments that sat on any international intervention and they contributed to the crimes as such that was committed to Isaippriyaa and thousands of victims like her.

Obviously such establishments would oppose to any war crimes investigation.